John Grahl on Gérard Duménil and Dominique Lévy, Crise et sortie de crise: ordre et désordres néolibéraux. A Marxist exploration of the sea changes in the world economy since the seventies.

JOHN GRAHL

THE SWAY OF FINANCE?

How are we to understand the new phase of capitalism that has emerged, over the last half-decade or so, from the long downturn that followed the postwar boom? A decisive resolution, at last, of a twenty-year period of crisis, with the deep restructuring that took place from the mid-seventies to the mid-nineties now clearing the way for sustained capital accumulation? Or as a more troubled exit into a new stage marked by further financial instability? Crise et sortie de crise reminds us that this is not the first time that modern capitalism has transformed itself in the course of a profound structural crisis. In this view from Paris, the emergence of the neoliberal order is set in a century-long perspective: what can the solutions of the Great Depression that beset the final decades of the nineteenth century tell us about the trajectories of today?